1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an in-vehicle apparatus for executing a toll charging process when a current state of a vehicle (a current position, residence time or the like of the vehicle) satisfies a predetermined toll charging condition. The present invention also relates to a service providing system for providing a particular service through the in-vehicle apparatus.
2. Description of Related Art
To eliminate or reduce a traffic jam at a tollgate of a toll road, an ETC (Electronic Toll Collection) system and an ERP (Electronic Road Pricing) system have been proposed. The ETC system collects a toll without requiring the vehicle to stop at the tollgate. The ERP system collects the toll from a vehicle that enters a particular area (e.g., a downtown area) to reduce traffic density in that area.
In the ETC system, a DSRC (Dedicated Short-Range Communication) radio system is used for road-vehicle communication between a roadside unit installed in the tollgate and an in-vehicle apparatus installed in each corresponding vehicle. The DSRC radio system is a two-way short range radio communication system utilizing a millimeter wave (5.8 GHz) channel and conforms to the industry standard “ARIB STD-T55” specified by a Japanese aggregate corporation, so called “the Association of Radio Industries and Businesses”.
In the ERP system, in order to collect the toll in a manner similar to that of the ETC system, it is required to install the roadside unit (antenna) to each entry route leading to the particular area (hereinafter, referred to as “toll area”). Therefore, when many entry routes leading to the toll area exist as in the case of the downtown area or the like, enormous cost and work are required for installation of the roadside units and maintenance and management of these units. For example, one method has been proposed to overcome this disadvantage in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 11-213192. In this method, the charging process is executed by determining whether a current position of a vehicle is within the toll area based on a result of position measurement using a GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver installed in the vehicle.
In order to realize such ETC system and ERP system, it is required to install an in-vehicle apparatus adapted to these systems to each vehicle.
However, various illegal operations may be conducted on these in-vehicle apparatuses. For example, in a case of using an IC card for identifying an object (e.g., a vehicle) to be charged, someone may intentionally remove the IC card from an IC card reader connected to the in-vehicle apparatus. Also, in a case of executing the charging process based on a result of position measurement with the GPS receiver, someone may intentionally disconnect a signal line connected to the GPS receiver or may intentionally turn off the power to the GPS receiver. Theses actions disable the determination of whether the toll charging condition is satisfied. Furthermore, someone may install and run an illegal program in the in-vehicle apparatus to get rid of the toll charge. Therefore, an effective countermeasure for such illegal operations has been demanded.